


Modern Archaeology for the Lay Goblin

by Arazsya



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-31 13:14:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17850113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arazsya/pseuds/Arazsya
Summary: Grizzop hates Rome on sight, and he walks into it anyway.





	Modern Archaeology for the Lay Goblin

Grizzop hates Rome on sight, and he walks into it anyway. It’s what has to be done, so he does it, even though the air hits the back of his throat wrong – cuts like cold but still feels like he’s tried to swallow a heat haze. He hasn’t got time to not breathe it. The two members of the Apollo church who’d insisted on accompanying him seem to think that they have – he can just about hear them discussing it, but he’s moving out of range now. Slipped away from them so easily that he thinks for a moment that Sasha might have been proud of him. But they never would have seen Sasha in the first place – she’d have slipped past them like an owl on the hunt, and they would have just kept on arguing about oaths and great quests and whatever else the Church of Apollo talks about.

Grizzop doesn’t want to care, but he hopes they don’t come any further in. Their pilgrimage to witness the damage that evil can wreak would have been fulfilled the second that the city had broken the horizon, sick-skied and slanting. They’d only come deeper because the younger one had insisted that they see Grizzop safely to his destination, and hopefully now that Grizzop is gone, his companion will be able to make him see sense. They’re too loud for this place, clanking armour and whispers that, for ears used to Sasha, sound far too close to shouting. This isn’t their responsibility, too much for a paladin on his first pilgrimage, and there are too many things here that would splinter that shiny breastplate between their teeth. Grizzop can tell that without even seeing a sign of them – there’s a charge to Rome, a hush that has him moving through the shadows even when there’s no flicker of movement on the road.

He hopes that he might be following in the others’ footsteps.

He finds the first sign that that might be true not long after he’s left any faint reminder of the Apollo lot far behind – on the side of what might once have generously been called a building, but now seems collapsed in on itself, a scorch-mark curls like rippled water. Nothing else nearby, though he searches until he’s been in the sun long enough that can feel the heat of his own breastplate through his undershirt. There’s no sign of any sort of fight, no blood, no bodies, and he tells himself that it might have been anything, anyone, from lightning strikes to Rome’s initial destruction all that time ago. But he knows the pattern that Hamid’s fire makes when it hits something, though he tries to pretend that he can’t be sure, and that the tightening in his chest is just from the heat.

Keep moving, he tells himself, and does, following the tracery of shadows along the old streets. There is a part of him trying to doubt his decision to stay behind in Damascus, and he quashes it with the force of one of Azu’s strikes, tries to imagine it splintering like the bones of the Cult of Hades should. It had been the right thing to do, had helped the most people, and he’d do the same again every time he was asked to make the choice. He’ll find the others. If nothing else, he’s sure they’ll all end up standing around the same corpses. If he’s lucky, he’ll get there before Hamid has the place go up like a summer hillside and get a few shots in himself.

The shadow’s visible before the axe, stretching out on the road ahead of Grizzop, like the notches in an ancient stone to tell the time and season. It tells him that he’s too late. The blade is embedded in a wall, near the remains of a small building. It’s gone deep into the stone, and he doubts he could remove it himself. He recognises it, even without moving too close, into the bright patch of sunlight it’s in. He traces in his head the tones of the song it had sung when Azu had wielded it, marks the place where the handle is smoother from her grip.

It would have been a strong blow. He hopes that she hit whatever it was.

There’s another of those scorchmarks on the fragments of the building – if he’d had Azu’s strength and something in his head eating his sense of purpose, he could have fit it back together like a jigsaw. He can dismiss, then, the idea that it’s anything to do with Rome’s weather – it’s hot, but as much as it feels like his armour is burning, it’s not taken on a molten glow to match the diseased sun. It wouldn’t have been enough to make those marks.

The broken edges of the stone are still clean, with no signs of weathering – the building has only recently been felled. There’s no one lying in its remains, no clutching, dust-whitened hand sticking out from under the debris. Just an archaeologist’s dream in shattered pottery, and a few faint blood spots over broken tiles. It’s not enough for anyone to have bled out.

He opens his mouth to call for them, and then he closes it again, setting his teeth at just the wrong angle, so there’s a sharp discomfort there in concert with the one in his stomach.

So, they had been attacked. They had taken shelter, and healed, until whatever it was had moved on, and then they had done so too. That or Einstein had teleported them out of there, and Grizzop would have no trail to follow because they wouldn’t still be there. But at least they would still be _somewhere_.

Grizzop settles his quiver more comfortably against his back, makes sure he can draw from it quickly, and makes to set off again. If they’re still around, he’ll have to move faster; the blood is dry and already vanishing under a new layer of grime.

Under the rubble to his left, something glints. It’s not unusual, with so much broken, but he stops, and turns towards it, and his eye catches on something a little like the pattern of oil on water. He moves towards it, crouches, though he could see it well enough from his full height, and starts to move the stones out of the way with a sort of dull reverence.

It’s a dagger, a little longer for him than it would have been in Sasha’s hand, but familiar all the same. Adamantine. She could have died diving after the damned thing in that trap. And now he holds it, and she’s nowhere to be seen, and he knows it’s not because she’s chosen to be that way. It hadn’t had a scratch on it, then. Now, the edge of the blade seems almost bitten, a notch dug ragged into the once-smooth line.

She still wouldn’t have left it behind. He’s not thought on it much, doesn’t know if Sasha just collects them like a magpie or if she’s measuring her worth by the number hidden in her jacket, but it shouldn’t be here without her. He wants to take it and drive it into the wall with Azu’s axe, heave over one of the scorched stones, build them a memorial that no one else will ever see.

He doesn’t have time. Doesn’t have time for that, or to wonder what he’d been doing while they faced something that had left no trace of them, if he’d been sawing at a pipe in his underwear. Staying was the only decision he could have made, with the information he’d had. His duty, in service of the greater good. It doesn’t mean that he loves his pack any less than Hamid does, for all the good it’s ever done either of them.

There are a lot of things that he doesn’t have time for, but the thing in his throat, that’s not quite regret but tastes the same as it, still starts to waste his air wondering, what if he’d been there.

Grizzop gently places the dagger back where he found it, climbs back to his feet, and turns to face deeper into Rome.

He does not pray. He wouldn’t want Artemis to answer anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> so hopefully this'll be jossed for patrons in about five hours?


End file.
